Integration of Conservation Strategies of Plant Genetic ... - Genres

of direct importance to the institutional system and covers a majority of farmers in
developing countries. Nevertheless it does not benefit in any substantial manner from
advances in plant breeding or from ex-situ genebanks.
These definitions represent the extremities of what in reality is more of a continuum. Many
farmers will, pending on the crop and/or the environment participate to a greater or lesser extent
in both systems.
Most major centers of diversity of crops are located in the tropics and sub-tropics. This is
fortunate, because for that reason there is still a lot of genetic diversity in-situ maintained in the
informal system. The need to integrate in such regions in-situ and ex-situ conservation is obvious
and has received attention in the Biodiversity Convention and in funding made available through
the Green Environment Fund managed by the World Bank. It forms the basis of a number of new
initiatives that are being developed by some international institutes of the Consultative Group on
International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), notably IRRI (rice) and CIP (potatoes and minor
Andean crops) and a programme proposal prepared by the genebanks of the Netherlands and
Ethiopia together with regional Non-Government Organisations in Latin America, Africa and
Asia. Such programmes are concentrated on areas where the adoption of modern varieties is low
because farmers prefer for a variety of reasons their traditional landraces. The objective of such
programmes is to better understand farmers practises in management and use of genetic diversity
and combine in-situ conservation with improved agricultural technology within the environmental
and socio-economic constraints prevalent in such regions. The basic assumption is that the
informal system will continue to play a role for some time.
Industrial countries
It is obvious that in Western Europe together with North America and countries such as New
Zealand and Australia modern agriculture and the formal institutional system is dominant.
In this system farmers have become dependent on the formal institutional system for the supply
of varieties and have by and large stopped to play a role in conserving genetic diversity, either
directly or indirectly. This institutional dependence is further strengthened by legislation such as
Plant Breeders' Right (PBR) and Registered Lists of Varieties protecting the interests of a largely
commercial seed industry. This is considered essential to attract private investment in
plantbreeding. Farmers are still free to choose what varieties they want to grow . However this
choice often does not include local landraces since they usually do not satisfy requirements set for
official approval in registered lists and for most major crops the sale of such seeds is prohibited
by law.
There is no question that modern agriculture and plantbreeding have made important
contributions to a very productive agriculture in Europe. In this process however a large diversity
of local landraces of traditional crops in European agriculture have been replaced by a more
limited number of uniform modern varieties even if the actual varieties may have resulted from
crosses between materials of very diverse genetic origins. As a result local landraces of most crops
have become rare in Western Europe and are mainly restricted to some economically and
environmentally more marginal areas of Southern Europe.
As a consequence, in Western Europe conservation of genetic diversity relies largely on ex-situ
genetic resources programmes. In the past a very commercially oriented plantbreeding industry
in Western Europe has given low priority to conservation. Hence it is fair to say that genetic